TEXT: Job 1:6-12, 2:1-6
SUBJECT: Meditations on Job #2: The Court
Today, with the Lord’s blessing, we’ll move on in the series I began last week called Meditations on Job. I chose the word, meditations, carefully because that’s all I have to offer—thoughts on Job—and nothing like an exposition of what may be the greatest—and most difficult—book in the Bible.
Job shows life for what it is—a mystery—not to God, but to everyone else, especially the ones who think it isn’t. What is a star? It’s a globe of burning gas, replies the astronomer, but he’s wrong. That’s what it’s made of, but not what it is! In the same way human life can be weighed and measured, discussed and analyzed, but only the Lord knows what it is. After thirty-five chapters of arguing, no one says, See, I told you so. Both the friends of Job—and Job himself—are struck dumb at the mystery of life and the God who rules it.
The book of Job, therefore, does not explain human suffering or defend God against the charge of not caring about it. What it does is present a Lord who’s strong enough, wise enough, and good enough to trust, even when your family is dead, your fortune is wiped out, and your body is covered with running sores.
Last time, we looked at Job the man—the holiest man in the world, he was, and also put through the ringer of pain, loneliness, and frustration. That’s the first scene in the play.
Now the curtain rises on Scene Two.
THE KING
It takes place in a Royal Court. A king is enthroned there, and all around him are high servants, reporting what they have seen, and ready to do his bidding. The King is God, who is seen in some of His Imperial splendor. We are not used to Royal Courts, and we have a hard time picturing them in our minds. Job doesn’t help us much because it doesn’t need to. The people who first read it had some idea of how a king lived and how his ministers served him. And so we have to go elsewhere for the feeling of His majesty.
Isaiah 6 is the first place that comes to mind. The prophet, it seems, was part of the royal family in Jerusalem. He may have known the king and grown up with the young princes. But in the year that King Uzziah died, he saw another Court,
I saw the Lord, sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the Temple. Above it stood six seraphim; each one had six wings: with two he covered his face, with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one cried to another, and said, ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts, the whole earth is full of His glory’. And the posts of the door were shaken by the voice of him who cried out, and the house was filled with smoke. And I said, ‘Woe is me, for I am undone! I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell among a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts!”
Every word of his vision deserves long and careful meditation. But here are a few things that occurred to me.
§ Isaiah had seen kings before, but no king like this one! The Lord is not like Uzziah, only bigger, but is in a category all His own! One will reply that Judah was a small kingdom with a small king, and that’s true. But Babylon was no backwoods capital and Nebuchadnezzar was the greatest king who ever lived. And what did he say about other kings, emperors, pharaohs, sultans, and the like in comparison to the King of Heaven?
His dominion is an everlasting dominion, and His kingdom is from generation to generation. All the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing; He does according to His will in the in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth. No one can restrain His hand or say to Him, ‘What have you done’…And those who walk in pride, He is able to abase.
§ The servants of this King are called seraphim, and that means fiery ones. Apparently, these are creatures made out of fire, or perhaps they are so bright that they seem to be. In any event, they’re awesome beings—far above anything we’ve seen in real life or the movies. Yet the Vision of God is so splendid that even they can’t take their eyes off Him and, at the same, can’t gaze upon Him. He’s both too bright to look at and to not look at!
§
§ His train fills the Temple and His voice rattles the pillars that hold it up. This would be impressive if the Temple He filled and the pillars He shook were the ones in Jerusalem. But they’re not! This is the Temple in heaven, of which the one of earth was only a model—like a model airplane compared to a real one. Yet the size and power of this King dominates the heavenly Temple.
§ The House was filled with smoke. It is the smoke of incense burned before Him, with the smoke of sacrifices mixed in, perhaps. But why was incense burned in the Holy Place? The Lord liked the smell, for one thing, but that’s not all: it provided a smokescreen so that men could look at His glory and not be annihilated by it! Paul says He dwells in a light that no one can approach; that no one has seen Him or can see Him.
Holy, Holy, Holy is one of our greatest hymns, but one line of it is mistaken. It says,
Though the darkness hide Thee
The Lord is not hidden in darkness, but in light! We cannot see Him or understand His ways, but because they’re too dark, but because they’re too bright!
§ The Majesty of this King is chiefly in His character. Isaiah doesn’t feel puny before the King; he feels dirty! In particular, his lips feel dirty. Why? Because he cusses and tells smutty jokes? No, that’s not it at all. But because He has spoken about this King, and now, seeing Him for what He is, the prophet feels that His best words are like drawing a mustache on the Mona Lisa.
This is the King in our story. He’s the One who messes with Job’s life, the One Job questions and criticizes, and the One Job meets in the end, and to whom he can only say,
Behold, I am vile. What shall I answer You? I lay my hand over my mouth. Once I have spoken, but I will not answer; yes, twice, but I will proceed no further.
THE MINISTERS
The King is meeting with His ministers, who are called the sons of God. It seems they are angels of some kind, perhaps archangels or what Paul refers to as powers and principalities, rulers in heavenly places.
What are they doing? They’re answering to the King. To our minds, the word, angel conjures up comic characters (like the one in It’s a Wonderful Life), or maybe cute babies with bare bottoms! Or perhaps men with wings. But what we see in movies or Valentine cards or even high art do an injustice to the angels. For they’re not cute and cuddly creatures, but giant and deadly warriors! Daniel had live with kings and emperors, generals and heroes. But when he saw an angel, he fainted. John the Apostle was so impressed by his majesty, that he tried to worship an angel! When Manoah saw one in the form of a man, he thought the sight would kill him!
Yet the angels and powers and principalities and rulers are standing before their King unable to speak until they are spoken to.
If you’ve read or watched The Lord of the Rings, you know the villain is the dark lord, Sauron. He commands a huge army of men, goblins, trolls, a wizard, and other evil things. But of his many servants, nine in particular stand out: they are Nazgul, neither living nor dead. Once they were nine human kings, men of great power and intelligence. But slowly, one by one, they came under Saruon’s rule and now the mightiest kings who ever lived have become puppets of the Dark Lord. What kind of being could enslave kings?
And what kind of Being could rule the lords of heaven? Only God. And that’s what He is doing in our story, presiding over the mightiest creatures ever made!
Nebuchadnezzar calls them the army of heaven—an army that no human force could oppose. Yet there they are bowing before their King…and one of them is cringing.
THE SATAN
That would be Satan.
Satan is not a name like Tom or Debbie. It’s a description: it means adversary, preachers will tell you—and that’s true, it does. But there may be a better way of translating it, a way that cuts awfully close. Satan means one who holds a grudge!
Satan hates God and has a long score to settle with Him. That’s what his whole life is for and about—poking the Lord in the eye. He knows he cannot win the war on heaven, but he’s eager to inflict as much damage as he can before his time is up. John says
Woe to the inhabitants of the earth and sea! For the devil has come down to you, having great wrath, because he knows that his time is short.
Think of him as a mighty soldier who has been mortally wounded. He knows he won’t get out alive, but he’s not going alone! He wants to take as many with him as he can!
But even though Satan is powerful and furious, he is not sovereign. He stands before the King with his palms up. He’s making no demands, but asking for a favor.
There is great comfort in this, isn’t there? Satan is the angriest, most cunning, and malicious creature in the universe. He is like a serpent, a lion, and great red dragon all rolled into one! If he had his way, no sin would be uncommitted, no sinner would be saved, and no saint would make it to heaven.
But he doesn’t have his way. Someone has called Satan God’s most reliable servant. Everything he does is meant to honor himself and dishonor God, but they all boomerang on him. They all end up glorifying the Lord—and knocking out the devil!
This happens with Job. Satan’s two goals are to break Job and to make him curse God. But Job ends up worshiping God and living happily ever after.
THE CHALLENGE
I have heard many sermons on Job, but most of the preachers got something wrong. They say that Satan challenged the Lord, that he proposed a wager, you might say. But this is not so. Satan is trembling before His King, and proposes nothing.
It is God who makes the wager: Have you considered My servant Job? There is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, one who fears God and shuns evil?
What’s He getting at? Well, Satan has been roaming all over the world, and he hasn’t found a good man yet. Some are better than others, of course, but no one is blameless. But God says there is such a man—Job!
Satan rises to the bait. Of course Job is a good man because it pays well. God has made him rich and healthy and powerful and happy. Take away his money and break his health and he’ll curse the Lord to His face!
It’s a bet says the Lord. Satan tears into the man, killing his children, wiping out his fortune, breaking his health, sending in his wife to counsel suicide, and his friends to pile on.
But Job survived the attacks.
In all this Job did not sin nor charge God with foolishness.
And he did more than survive them. He grew through them and came out of them a better man than he was when they began.
When He has tried me, I shall come forth as gold.
That was his hope. And it was hope met.
THE SUMMARY
The court in heaven has met, the King has been honored and His fool has been laughed at—not laughed with, but at. No one wins a bet against the Lord. Because His grace is sufficient.
THE MEDITATION
There is a battle raging in heaven and we have a part to play in it. Satan and his allies are fighting tooth and nail to make us quit with the Lord, to doubt His promises, to disobey His law, and to abuse or ignore His friends in the world.
The powers of hell are real, cunning, relentless, and strong. If we had to resist them alone, our efforts would be vain. But we are not alone—the King is with us! And so are His mightiest servants, the angels, the cherubim, the seraphim (not to mention good men). Thus we can resist the devil—and he will flee.
But resisting him takes effort on our part. The Bible never says, Let God resist the devil for you. No, it is resist the devil, flee idolatry, flee fornication, pursue holiness, fight the good fight of faith, stand fast, acquit yourselves like men, put on the whole armor of God. These are duties—done by grace, of course they are—but they remain duties. We do them.
And we do them all by faith and not by sight. Job did not see Satan fighting against him—he saw dead children and bills he could not pay, and a hand black with disease! Neither did He see God fighting for him. It seemed to Job the Lord had deserted him. But He hadn’t. He was there all the time, fighting against His most hated enemy and for His beloved servant and son.
This is your challenge and mine: to live by faith in a God we cannot see when surrounded by problems we can see. God give us to grace to do so. For Christ’s sake. Amen.